Religious Conversion and Quota benefits

Religious Conversion and Quota benefits

Subject: Polity

Context: Union Government is all set to constitute a national commission to study the social, economic and educational status of members of Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, who converted to religions other than Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.

Concept :

• The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, lays down that no person professing a religion different from the Hindu or Sikh or Buddhist religion can be deemed to be a member of an SC.
• However, this provision has been amended several times.
• The original order under which only Hindus were classified as SCs, was amended to include Sikhs in 1956, and Buddhists in 1990.
• There is a 15 per cent quota for SCs in government jobs.
• The issue is limited to Dalits since there is no religion-specific mandate for STs andthe OBCs. 

Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), site lays down the position on SC status and conversions:

• A person shall be held to be a member of an SC or ST if he belongs to a caste, or a tribe which has been declared as such.
• No person who professes a religion different from the Hindu or the Sikh religion shall be deemed to be a member of the SCs.
• Further a person belonging to a SC or ST will continue to be deemed as such irrespective of his/her marriage to a non-Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe.
• However, a convert or re-convert to Hinduism and Sikhism shall be accepted as a member of SC if he has been received back and accepted as a member of the concerned SC.
• No such religion-based bar, however, operates for STs and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
• The rights of a person belonging to a Scheduled Tribe are independent of his/her religious faith.